Apple

[Saltank]

I'm interested in getting the new iPad on a 24month contract, but want to know if the plans that relate to the iPad (Personal & Business) have image compression enabled. I've recently swapped may PAYG SIM on my old iPad from O2 to Vodafone, and discovered that all images are totally ruined. About a year ago I tried a monthly iPad data plan on Vodafone and this wasn't happening.

Is this only on PAYG or on all plans now? I know that it's possible to bypass the setting on my O2 pay monthly plan by changing APN settings to disable this network optimisation, but how about Vodafone?

Thanks.

[Nabs]

All networks use various techniques of bandwidth optimisation, one of which may indeed be image compression, It shouldn't be noticable to the end use though.

Which site/sites were you having issues with?

I recently had an iPhone on PAYG and never noticed any issues with image quality when browsing or downloading images.

[Saltank]

From my research, all networks except for Three (Pay monthly + PAYG) and Vodafone (Pay Monthly) mess with packets and when using the data (not wifi) pretty much all images (except for .png) will be heavily compressed. By all, I literally mean all: Viewing photos on Facebook, Instagram and anything else which has .jpeg and any other common format. All web browsing is affected, as well as viewing the App store, all the thumbnails look horrible, the preview photos look horrible, as well as any website with images.

I had to restort to using a VPN to avoid O2's unacceptable packet and 'network optimisation' but this isn't always convenient. Users pay for their data and should have the choice to avoid this measure as it's up to them how to use the data.

[Saltank]

I attach some samples of what I am talking about. This is happening on all iOS/Android phones I've tested connected to Orange, O2, T-Mobile and now the Vodafone PAYG iPad SIM.

I'm just trying to find out if this is now also done on the pay monthly iPad tarrifs, too.

[kids]

I use the monthly PAYG sim for my iPad and generally find the quality OK.

These three images from our own website were put onto the website at 100KB ( we have a reason for doing that at so low a resolution) and they display well on the iPad using the Vodafone PAYG sim connection. You have to bear in mind that taking a screenshot also reduces the image quality slightly.

[Nabs]

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Saltank wrote:

I attach some samples of what I am talking about. This is happening on all iOS/Android phones I've tested connected to Orange, O2, T-Mobile and now the Vodafone PAYG iPad SIM.

I'm just trying to find out if this is now also done on the pay monthly iPad tarrifs, too.

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Oh i can see what you mean those are horrible!

Maybe one of the Tech Team could do some digging on this and find out what, if any, compression is used.

[Saltank]

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kids wrote:

I use the monthly PAYG sim for my iPad and generally find the quality OK.

These three images from our own website were put onto the website at 100KB ( we have a reason for doing that at so low a resolution) and they display well on the iPad using the Vodafone PAYG sim connection. You have to bear in mind that taking a screenshot also reduces the image quality slightly.

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You are using WiFi and this is not entirely what I mean.
Unless you've connected that iPad to a WiFi hotspot (for example, turned on tethering on your iPhone) then I'll assume you're just connected to your normal home/office router and of course there wouldn't be any compression if that's not connected to a mobile network.

[kids]

Saltank wrote:

You are using WiFi and this is not entirely what I mean.
Unless you've connected that iPad to a WiFi hotspot (for example, turned on tethering on your iPhone) then I'll assume you're just connected to your normal home/office router and of course there wouldn't be any compression if that's not connected to a mobile network.

Apologies, I did misunderstand you.

So I have just gone to our website with 3G only  and the attached images do not appear to have suffered.

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[Saltank]

I would appreciate some knowledge from people that use the internet on their iPad through Vodafone data.

As I've said, PNG's are rare and networks don't do anything to this format. It's the JPG, JPEG etc that are affected.

[Dave · Accepted solution]

Hi guys,

Whilst we do use a small amount of image compression on the network, this is not to a level that would produce a significantly noticeable difference - certainly not to the extent of the last screenshot from Saltank - and there is nothing specific to the iPad in place.

The more likely cause is down to available bandwidth - if there was site congestion, the iPad may only have been able to download a poor quality version of the image before timing out.

Saltank - Give the same pages a go in another location and let us know if you see a difference.

Dave

[Saltank]

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Dave wrote:

Hi guys,

Whilst we do use a small amount of image compression on the network, this is not to a level that would produce a significantly noticeable difference - certainly not to the extent of the last screenshot from Saltank - and there is nothing specific to the iPad in place.

The more likely cause is down to available bandwidth - if there was site congestion, the iPad may only have been able to download a poor quality version of the image before timing out.

Saltank - Give the same pages a go in another location and let us know if you see a difference.

Dave

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Thanks Dave, I did a bit more testing and the image compression was either temporary or as a result of me not clearing the cache in Safari on my iPad. I tested loading the App store, all the icons look as they should, and several websites are also normal.

I'll proceed and order my 'new iPad' now.

[kids]

Saltank wrote:

As I've said, PNG's are rare and networks don't do anything to this format. It's the JPG, JPEG etc that are affected.

On our website the images are jpg files, PNG is simply the file format that the iPad saves the image to in the camera roll if you do a screen shot.

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